Storytelling as a Tool for Climate Action: How Africanfuturism Can Unveil the Crucial Role Gender Justice Plays in Climate Action

Born out of the scientific fiction genre Afrofuturism, Africanfuturism is rooted in Africa and deploys elements of mysticism, futurism, and science, while challenging and decentering the white Western imagination. The term was coined by Nnedi Okorafor, who sought to expand on Mark Dery’s original definition of “Afrofuturism”. In his essay “Black to the Future” (1994), Mark Dery gathers the themes explored across the Black sci-fi authors Samuel R. Delaney, Greg Tate, and Tricia Rose under the term “Afrofuturism”. According to Dery, this subgenre is “Speculative Fiction that addresses African-American themes and addresses African-American concerns in the context of twentieth-century technoculture—and, more generally, African-American signification that appropriates images of technology and a prosthetically enhanced future” (p. 180). Although Afrofuturism and Africanfuturism are grounded in connections shared across the Black Diaspora, Okorafor explicitly differentiates Africanfutrism by centering African culture, history, and mythology to reimagine Black futures that are rooted in liberation, hope, and technological advancement (Okorafor et al., 2020).

As the genre continues to evolve and reflect the realities of today, more Africanfuturist stories are unveiling the imminent impacts of climate change on African traditions, cultures, and contemporary issues. In “Africanfuturism and the Reframing of Gender in the Fiction of Nnedi Okorafor,” Arit Oku demonstrates this by exploring the role gender justice plays in reimagining African futures. Published by Feminist Africa, Oku’s “Africanfuturism and the Reframing of Gender in the Fiction of Nnedi Okorafor” employs Okorafor’s short story, “Mother of Invention”, to explore how climate disasters impact women in futuristic Nigeria.

The story follows twenty-nine-year-old Anwuli in the fictional New Delta, Nigeria as she navigates pregnancy during a deadly allergy season known as a “pollen tsunami,” which is a more intense and longer pollen season that is exacerbated by climate change. As a single mother who is financially dependent on her ex-fiancé, her journey navigating this climate disaster becomes an even greater hurdle due to the negative stigmas she faces as a single pregnant mother. This gendered social isolation leaves her bed-ridden in her AI smart home, referred to as Obi 3, preventing Anwuli from accessing critical medical care. However, Anwuli’s story is not unique. Oku reads Anwuli as a case study for single Nigerian mothers, and low-income women broadly speaking, persistently abandoned by the patriarchal power structures of local governance (Oku, 2021, p. 82).

Oku’s reading of Anwuli is further exemplified by contemporary maternal health rates in Nigeria. In 2022, The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that Nigeria made up 34% of global maternal deaths. With limited access to high-quality health care, low-income pregnant people in Nigeria struggle to receive life-saving care, which contributes to the country’s high mortality rate (Aderinto, 2022). Okorafor highlights this throughout Anwuli’s pregnancy journey illustrating the neglectful medical system while using visceral imagery to depict her painful experience. She cements this further, detailing how she never “imagine[d] she’d eventually come down with the rare illness everyone had been talking about. And her doctor, also a local to her community, had been so cold about it” (Okorafor, 2018). Additionally, through Anwuli’s diagnosis with the rare illness, Izeuzere, due to the pollen tsunami plaguing New Delta, Okorafor emphasizes how climate change can exacerbate maternal mortality rate statistics if left unmitigated. According to Oku, Okorafor accomplishes this through Anwuli’s description of how the overproduction of GMO grass has led to severe climate conditions that are “built to survive and reproduce, not to keep from killing us.” She continues, describing how Anwuli “couldn’t help but note the irony: Plant fertilizer was going to kill her as she was giving birth.” It is this environmental crisis compounded by gender discrimination that puts Anwuli at risk in “Mother of Invention” (Oku, 2021, p. 83).

Although “Mother of Invention” is a story about a Nigerian woman, Oku argues that it pulls together climate realities to paint a realistic yet futuristic vision for African women and femmes across the continent, without climate interventions rooted in racial and gender justice. In 2020, it was reported that 70% of global maternal deaths were in sub-Saharan Africa (World Health Organization, 2023). This is a sobering reality that Oku argues Okorafor brings to the forefront of her writing. Okorafor’s use of Obi 3 also illuminates an even deeper message about how African women and femmes can harness technology to escape the disproportionate impacts of climate change. Throughout the story, Obi 3 represents a reliable support system for Anwuli as it anticipates all her needs during her pregnancy and even saves her life by creating a pollen filter during the birth of her child. This life-saving technology could be seen as a call to address Africa’s 37% digital gender gap between men and women’s access to internet or digital devices (World Bank Group, 2024). Oku further expands Okorafor’s feminist lens to reveal a deeper lesson – addressing patriarchy in Africa can unlock new dimensions of climate action. This is a critical contribution to Africanfuturism that transforms the genre into a tool for challenging gender stereotypes in postcolonial narratives and asserting the liberatory role genderequity plays in Africa’s climate future.